The Lombard bowed his head in acknowledgement. ‘No. But to them, I am unknown and, in the instant that you step once more over your father’s threshold, unwelcome.’
‘But-’ Geoffroi, frowning, met his companion’s dark eyes. And realised there was no need to say more.
‘Go on,’ the Lombard urged. ‘I will not be far behind.’
Geoffroi gave him one last look. Then, unable to restrain himself, he turned and headed away, at first walking but quickly breaking into a run, up the track that led to home.
As always, it was the tops of the watchtowers on the outer corners of the great Acquin courtyard that came into view first. As he hurried on, the long, low roofs of the main buildings became visible, the warm spring sun beating down on them and catching blueish glints and shimmers from the flint; it was lavender coloured in the bright light.
Now he was almost there.
He ran through the small village that surrounded the manor, aware of curious eyes peering out at him but not wanting to stop. Past the church, where someone called out to him. He ignored the cry.
Then at last up the path to the gates.
Slowing down, stopping, he stood and gazed into the courtyard.
He could hear voices from somewhere within; they would be preparing the noon meal. Somebody laughed. Was it Esmai? He thought so. Another female voice responded, full of affection. His mother.
He felt as if a slow and gentle hand were squeezing his heart.
Then a man appeared from one of the storerooms, heading towards the family accommodation, head down, lost in contemplation.
Geoffroi said, ‘Father?’
The man turned. Caught sight of Geoffroi, standing in the gateway. Instantly his face lit with love and happiness and, crying out ‘It’s Geoffroi! Geoffroi’s come home!’ Robert d’Acquin tripped and stumbled across the courtyard to take his son in his arms.
The joy of being home again was so great that it seemed there could never be enough celebration and thanksgiving.
Geoffroi had been away for almost three years. His family, with no idea of how long he would be gone and therefore no yardstick by which to judge whether or not he was overdue, had spent the months of his absence alternating between bright optimism and the darkness of despair. Their parish priest, Father Herluin, had encouraged the former and gently reprimanded them for the latter, reminded them that despair was a sin against the Holy Spirit. Being a human being as well as a priest, however, he had understood a mother and a father’s anxiety and grief for a missing son and he had imposed but light penance.
They had never stopped praying for him. Father Herluin told him so, in a quiet moment when Geoffroi had sought out the priest to ask how they had fared while he was away. Nor had their belief in the rightness of his crusade ever wavered; not, at least, according to Father Herluin. He added, however, as, after hearing Geoffroi’s confession, he walked with him out of the church and saw him on his way, ‘I trust, my son, that there will be no more crusading in the immediate future?’
And Geoffroi, understanding what it was that lurked unspoken behind the words, said, ‘No, Father Herluin. There will not.’
He could see for himself, once the euphoria of homecoming had begun to wane, what his long absence had done to his family. His father, who bore by far the greater part of the weighty responsibility of Acquin, had aged by more than the three years that Geoffroi had been away. It could not be the work and the heavy duty that had worn him down, Geoffroi reasoned, for he had been accustomed to those burdens for all of his adult life, since inheriting Acquin from his own father. And it was not as if Sir Robert had missed Geoffroi’s contribution to the labour of running the estate because, as a page, a squire and finally a knight, he had always lived away from home and never made any contribution.
He talked it over with the Lombard, now a popular and honoured guest at Acquin. (‘Any man who travelled, fought and suffered with my son,’ Sir Robert had told him, ‘is as welcome here as Geoffroi himself.’) The Lombard, who, it seemed to Geoffroi, observed much but spoke little, gave the matter due thought before replying.
‘I think, my friend,’ he said eventually, ‘that what ails your father would have come to him anyway, for he suffers from the pains in the joints and the narrowing of the chest that afflict many men as they begin to grow old.’
‘He is not all that old,’ Geoffroi protested.
The Lombard shrugged. ‘Maybe not. But he has lived a demanding life, would you not say? A life of hard work, out in all weathers, so that the damp of autumn and the chill of winter have entered his bones and taken up permanent lodging there?’
‘But-’ Geoffroi began. Then, lapsing into silence, he gave a brief nod.
The Lombard reached out to touch his arm. ‘Do not take the burden on to yourself,’ he said softly. ‘Whilst the long absence of a loved son might not do much to assuage an ageing man’s pains and ailments, it certainly is not a primary cause of them.’
As always, Geoffroi reflected, his friend spoke good sense.
‘I worry about my brother Robert as well,’ he said, the words bursting out of him in the relief of actually speaking his concerns out loud. ‘He does not look healthy. He coughs — have you heard him at night? — and he has a pallor that is not natural in a man who spends much of his day out of doors. And there is the matter of Adela.’
Geoffroi’s brother Robert, they said, had fallen in love with a neighbouring lord’s daughter, adoring her from afar while he plucked up courage to court her. But he dallied too long, and she married another. Robert, according to his sister Esmai, had been heartbroken. Still was, for all that Adela was now a wife of a year or more and expecting her first child.
The Lombard sighed. ‘For some men, it is like that. They love, they lose, they are hurt beyond comfort.’
‘But there must be other girls, if Robert has set his heart on a wife and a family!’ Geoffroi protested.
The Lombard looked at him steadily. ‘For some, yes, there is recovery and then the joy of a new love. For others. .’ He let the sentence trail away.
And Geoffroi, grieving, found no comfort.
The Lombard, sympathy in his face and in his tone, said, ‘My friend, to ease your torments over how you find your father and your brother, think now about your mother.’
With relief, Geoffroi did so. And — as he suspected the Lombard had intended — his expression lifted.
The lady Matilda, Geoffroi’s mother, uncomplicated soul that she was, had spent the years of her son’s absence keeping her hands busy with her wide daily round of tasks, her mind occupied with the care and duty she owed to her family and to her husband’s tenants, and her heart with God. Or, more likely, with Geoffroi, which, since he was away on God’s business, amounted to the same thing. To have Geoffroi home safe and sound had caused her such joy that she had wept for at least half an hour, before turning to practical matters such as arranging a bath for him, attending to his small hurts and beginning on the huge task of washing and mending his clothes.
She moved now, Geoffroi had noticed, with a permanent smile on her face.
But there were also Esmai and young William.
His sister Esmai, he had noticed, had become very thin. Her small face had still a childlike look, and her figure was boyish, with hardly any breast development. She ate sparingly, and appeared to need a lot of sleep. When Geoffroi had broached the subject with his mother, she had said, with a small sigh, that Esmai had not come into her womanhood as she ought, and that she was therefore probably doomed to the life of a spinster. ‘No man wishes to wed a barren wife,’ Matilda said sadly, ‘no matter how pretty and bright she is, no matter how lively her conversation nor how deft her hands when she plies the needle.’
Geoffroi, understanding, had given his mother a hug. ‘She does not need a husband and a home of her own while she has us and Acquin,’ he said stoutly.